Forecast

Locked behind gate, homeless man burned in fire

BRIDGEPORT -- A homeless man was severely burned Friday morning after a locked metal security gate prevented his escape from a fire in a building where he had been staying.

Police officers on routine patrol saw heavy smoke in the downtown sky and traced it to the vacant commercial building at 1150 Main St., where they heard 47-year-old Javier Berrios screaming. Berrios suffered severe burns to his face, chest and arms, said William Kaempffer, a spokesman for the city's public safety departments.

"He was trapped behind a roll-up security gate," he said.

Firefighters, who arrived at 3:37 a.m., used cutting tools to get the man out from behind gate at the front door. The victim was taken to Bridgeport Hospital, but he was unable to speak with officers. Police made a tentative identification based on the man's tattoos. Berrios was in critical condition in the Bridgeport Hospital burn unit several hours after the fire, hospital spokesman John Cappiello said.

Assistant Chief Christopher Martin said the fire was confined to one room on the second floor in the rear of the building. The route Berrios would have used to enter and leave the building had likely been blocked by the fire, firefighters said.

Image 1of/12

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 12

Image 2 of 12

Image 3 of 12

Image 4 of 12

Image 5 of 12

Image 6 of 12

Image 7 of 12

Image 8 of 12

Image 9 of 12

Image 10 of 12

Image 11 of 12

Image 12 of 12

Locked behind gate, homeless man burned in fire

1 / 12

Back to Gallery

Although Berrios was the only person in the building when the fire broke out, there was evidence that another person had also been staying there, Martin said.

"We're going with the assumption that he had been squatting in the building for some time," Martin said. "It is a commercial building and it had been vacant for years."

Kaempffer said it was a challenging fire to fight because there was a lot of combustible material, including old mattresses, strewn around a large second-floor room that had been partitioned into smaller spaces.

"Firefighters also had to carry hoses up a very narrow staircase and deep into the building,'' he said.